RIVER NILE AND CANALS. 309 as a prodigy), have given such permanence to the monuments in the valley of the Nile, that enough has lemained to hear out tha father of Grecian history, and to show that, in describing what he professes to have seen, he is a guide perfectly trustworthy. For that which he heard, he appears only in the character of a reporter, and often an incredulous reporter ; but though this dis- tinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence is not only obvious, but of the most capital moment, 1 it has been too often neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness. The mysterious river Nile, a god 2 in the eyes of ancient Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its useful- ness undimiiiished amidst the general degradation of the country, reached the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, besides two others artificially dug ; the Pelusiac branch formed the eastern boundary of Egypt, the Kanopic branch one hun- dred and seventy miles distant the western ; while the Seben- nytic branch was a continuation of the straight line of the upper river : from this latter branched off the Saitic and the Mendesian arms. 3 Its overflowings are far more fertilizing than those of 1 To give one example : Herodotus mentions an opinion given to him by the ypanfiaTiaTtjs (comptroller) of the property of Athene at Sais, to the effect that the sources of the Nile were at an immeasurable depth in the interior of the earth, between Syene and Elephantine, and that Psammeti- chus had vainly tried to sound them with a rope many thousand fathoms in length (ii, 28). In mentioning this talc (perfectly deserving of being recounted at least, because it came from a person of considerable station in the coun- try), Herodotus expressly says: " This comptroller seemed to me to be only bantering, though he professed to know accurately," oiroc 6s tpoiye Ttai&iv EVOKES, <j>uftvof eidevai urpc/ecwf. Now Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to this story, introduces it just as if Herodotus had told it for a fact, Ho/.te 6' 'UpodoTof re not u/./.oi o/.vapovaiv, olov, etc. Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern writers, of similar carelessness or injustice towards this admirable author.
- Ol Ipfcf TOV Ne/>.oi>, Herod, ii, 90.
3 The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in ar.tiquity, are not con- formable to the modern geography of the country : sec Mannert, Geogr. der Gr. und HiJm. x, 1. p. 539. The brcadtli of the base of the IX-lta. between Pelii-sium and Kanopus, is overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand six hundred stadia; Diodorus (i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen hundred stadia, which is near the truth, though the text of Strabo in various passages is not uniform on thif
